The purpose of this comparative case study was to explore the ways educators at the school level experience the Common Core Standards and examine the contextual factors that impacted the way it was initially implemented. Qualitative data were gathered through teacher surveys, faculty focus groups, and interviews with each school principal and the two district Race to the Top coordinators. Analysis of the collected data uncovered common themes, including interpreting and framing the change, professional collaboration, impact of the change on teachers’ professional and personal lives, and pacing, communication, and training.

In December 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, which was a long overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. What is remarkable about this new federal legislation is that it explicitly reverses the decades-long federal effort to more tightly couple the U.S. educational system. While not removing testing requirements, the legislation dramatically reduces the federal role in shaping education policy, returning significant power to the states to design educational systems as they best see fit. The law places sharp limits on the use of federal executive power over education and has the potential to remove the federal government from oversight and accountability over schools, raising questions about the equity implications of this policy change. Research Method: Utilizing public documents, including legislation, speeches by federal officials, analyses by policy organizations, and news accounts, the authors trace the evolution of federal efforts from a more tightly coupled educational system to one with greater state and local flexibility in order to estimate the equity impact of efforts to decentralize governance. Findings: While certain provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act may reduce inequity and improve educational outcomes for all

Developing effective educational leaders is fundamentally and irrevocably an interpersonal, relational process-one that requires face-to-face contact, deep thought, deliberation, reflection, engagement, and interaction. It requires cultivation of the habits of heart, mind, and soul. For nearly a decade, the faculty at North Carolina State University (NCSU) have focused on dramatically improving principal preparation. This article explores the initial design of the program, its key features and how they have evolved, processes established for continuous improvement, major challenges faced and approaches to addressing these challenges, and recent program initiatives.

Superintendents leading school districts, particularly in hard-to-staff areas, face immense challenges in recruiting and retaining high-quality, well-trained teachers, principals, and district leaders. Many large urban areas as well as their rural counterparts have high concentrations of intergenerational poverty and unemployment. Rural areas are further disadvantaged by the lack of social and cultural attractions as well as fewer health care resources. In North Carolina, many of the lowest performing schools in the state are disproportionately clustered in rural areas. Superintendents leading districts in such areas face serious problems of high teacher and school leader turnover. As a result, superintendents are constantly engaged in an ongoing cycle of hiring new teachers, assistant principals, and district-level leaders. The graying of the school leadership profession further compounds the problem. For example, over the next 4 years in rural, high-poverty schools in North Carolina, an estimated 50% of principals will be eligible for retirement—making succession planning for quality school leadership a critical issue. In this article, we review the research and best practices on succession planning in education as well as in other sectors. Utilizing the theoretical framework of human capital theory, we illustrate how forward-thinking superintendents can partner with universities and other organizations to address the leadership challenges they face by creating strategic, long-term, leadership growth plans that build leadership capacity and potentially yield significant returns in improved student outcomes.

The purpose of this Q-methodology study was to develop an understanding of the perceptions of assistant principals of their current and idealized leadership practices. Fifty-six current assistant principals sorted a set of leadership behaviors two times—first based on dispositions currently deployed in their practice and a second time based on dispositions that they wish to employ. The Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning empirically developed the sorted statements. Three model factor arrays were derived from each sort. The findings indicate a unique perspective between current and idealized practices for assistant principals. Moreover the dispositions geared toward second-order change did not appear in the positive side of the distribution on both the current and the idealized arrays.